Can the Left adapt to the Trump era? Watch their climate activists for clues.

Summary: Can the Left effectively oppose Trump, making arguments that mobilize public opinion? Their actions since the election suggest not. Climate change is both the Left’s signature initiative and its greatest failure (28 years with no change in the US public’s policy priorities about climate). How (or if) the Left changes their climate advocacy will show if they can adapt to the Trump era.

London, 6 December 2009. Photo by Franck Robichon/EPA.

Astronomer Phil Plait writes at Slate, one of the Left’s better-known climate propagandists. His recent columns at Slate show why the Left has failed to mobilize public opinion — and that they have learned nothing from the election.

His November 28 column at Slate, Plait discussed Trump’s plan to get NASA out of climate change research. He played the same song climate activists have sung for a decade. He began by invoking the consensus of climate scientists, which he should state (but doesn’t). As expressed by the IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I…

“It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.”

This is important. But the relevant public policy question concerns future warming: what are the odds of various amounts of warming during different time horizons of the 21st century? There is no easy answer to this, let alone a consensus of climate scientists about it. So climate activists either ignore the research (such as the 4 scenarios described in AR5) or focus on the worst of these (the truly horrific RCP8.5), ignoring its unlikely assumptions.

Plait skips all these vital complexities, going from the consensus about past warming to boldly assert that “Climate change is already one of if not the biggest threat our species has faced.” He gives no evidence for this because there is so little. There is little evidence of a consensus of climate scientists about future warming. More broadly, has any scientist compared the various future warming scenarios to past threats, such as the Toba supereruption 75,000 years ago that might have almost exterminated humanity or WWIII starting during the Cold War?

The vast investment by the Left in its 28 year-long climate change campaign has had a trivial impact on the public policy priorities of the US public. It is one of the largest public relations failures in US history. See why the climate change debate broke and its lessons for the future. Plait’s behavior is typical of climate activists, and has helped poison the public debate. They earned their failure. Depending on how the climate changes, we might all pay for it. It might be difficult to restart the debate if evidence appears suggesting the worst-case scenarios are happening.

Looking ahead, will climate activists learn from their mistakes? Will they abandon their reliance on doomster forecasts, and again build on the work of climate science and the IPCC (once they called the “gold standard” of climate science, now they say it is “too conservative”)? If they cannot adapt, can the Left as a movement adapt to the Trump era?

The road back to reality will be long for climate activists

“You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”

— Part of a tirade by “Zach” to Donna Brazile, interim leader of the Democratic National Committee, at a staff meeting. Reported by the HuffPo.

“I can’t see humans existing within 10 years. We can do nothing to stop the planet becoming too hot to grow food and support life. It is already happening and we have less than a decade left.”

297 thoughts on “Can the Left adapt to the Trump era? Watch their climate activists for clues.”

There has been a lot of recent handwringing about scientists and other climate change advocates being censored or punished for their climate change efforts over the last decade.
Frankly, I can’t help but notice that names like Judith Curry, Anthony Watts, Laurence Tribe, Roger Pielke, JR & SR, Eric Worrall, Willis Eschenbach, Christopher Monckton, David Schnare, Craig Richardson, William Yeatman, Bob Tisdale, Bjorn Lomberg, Chris Horner, Daniel Yergin, and others (including me being called Pimp, Shill, Derp (?), have been sneered at, smeared and vilified over the last decade or so.
They have been called conspirators, denier, traitors, whores, anti-science and worse. Most of the above-mentioned people have also been excluded from any meaningful debate with their critics, while being punished financially for their views.
It is the unofficial RICO Act brought to bear on their lives and careers.
Anyway, I am proud to be numbered amongst this august group of scientists, academicians, legal scholars, energy activists, and contrarians. For the record, it is not about the money.
Steve
P.S. Thanks to Judith Curry for providing this compendium of Monty Python-like political antics and for her thoughtful editorial comments at the end.]

Probably, if the green blob lies low as long as Trump is in office, the movement might survive. Trump seems to be reactive on many subjects, rather than an ideologue, so he might ignore them. However, with sufficient genetic engineering, pigs might fly. True belivers are not known for discretion or moderation.

I submit this challenge to anyone and everyone who feels that the world would be a better place with significantly less people in it, whether they are a scientist, activist, teacher or Political Leader.
If you truly believe that the world is vastly overpopulated then feel free to leave it behind, lead the way for your followers, lead by example, just don’t take out anyone who doesn’t feel the same way as you. Do unto yourself as you would have done unto others

It is The Blob!
A horrible shapeless mass which consumes everything and everybody in its path.A monster which wreaks havoc and destroys everything.
Read all about it:http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/31590%7C0/The-Blob.html
You would be hard pressed to find a more apt description of the Green Movement today.

Steve
You really ought to give up your obsessive changing of blob to mob. Telling other contributors that they must use your language is childish…and tiresome.
Grow up and let others express themselves or just go away.

Steve,
The use of the term ‘mob’ implies that some insincere/opportunistic sorts of people were involved, and some special snowflakes around here get triggered by that idea . . so you best shut up about that potential, if you don’t want to get blobbed by them ; )

Speaking of green blobs, that guy in the head-post picture is getting a good exposure to one. Face paints are unregulated, and he’s covered his skin with green and blue paint.
He’s likely getting a good through-skin dose of whatever colors that paint. If he’s lucky, it’ll be some horrid organic polyaromatic. Otherwise, it could be some metal salt.
He could be setting himself up for some wonderful eczema later, from skin sensitization, or with down-stream consequences of metal toxication. In either case, his liver will get a workout.
Ecological sentiment sans thought — an unexpected minefield.

No they won’t adapt but understand that the rabid Alarmists are a small minority. But not as small as the rabid Skeptics 🙂 They’ll make a lot of noise because they’re dedicated, organized, and funded but they won’t get anywhere and probably end up angering more people than they gain in support. They’ll soon become recognized as anarchists and lose all credibility is my hope.

John,
‘if climate alarm skeptics had stopped debating with the climate alarmists, we’d be way better off, you figure, Larry?”
It takes two to dance. Lots of blame to share on both sides of the dysfunctional climate policy debate. The skeptics could have advocated preparing for past extreme weather, a proposition which might have received broad public support — perhaps even getting support from the Left (it would prepare us for future extreme weather). Instead they had fun with other issues, rejoicing (like you) in gridlock.
When the next catastrophic climate event reoccurs, I doubt people will quote John Knight’s wisdom about the benefits of gridlock – or be interested in your parsing of the blame for our lack of preparedness.
I suggest you start that “smackdowns” page. Time might give you material for it.

Markl.
“No, they won’t adapt …”
About climate change, probably not. But in a larger sense they already have adapted! For the past several years good Leftists casually spoke of human extinction — appeared in articles and comments on almost any subject. I collected some samples here, starting with this (relatively mild doomsterism):

“I think looking at grief is quite appropriate, as I believe we are facing human extinction.”

But Leftists are Americans, and so quickly adapt. Rather than the climate end times, they look forward to the fascist dictatorship of the Trump. Assistant professors of history see concentration camps in their future (e.g., here, here, and here), and say “I don’t actually have confidence that we will have a functional democracy by 2020.” Ezra Klein gives us a similar, and equally unfounded, warning: “Imagine if he were to refuse to accept the outcome of the next election once he is the president, and after he has appointed loyalists to control America’s security apparatus.”
I have confidence in the Left! When 2020 arrives and the Republic still stands, they will have amnesia about their failed forecasts in 2016 — as they have forgotten their many equally ludicrous past predictions.

“If current trends continue by the year 2000 the United Kingdom will simply be a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people, of little or no concern to the other 5-7 billion inhabitants of a sick world. … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
— Paul R. Ehrlich in London at the Institute of Biology in Autumn 1969. From “In Praise of Prophets” by Bernard Dixon in the New Scientist, 16 September 1971.

I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000
As an inhabitant of these sceptred isles, that was and is pretty close to the truth. The EU was a little to slow and not quite ruthless enough.
But they nearly made it so.

The longevity of Ehrlich’s credibility is a central mystery of the enviro/climate social mania. The man has never been correct in nearly 50 years of predicting Malthusian apocalypse. Yet he is still held in esteem.

Hunter,
“The longevity of Ehrlich’s credibility is a central mystery of the enviro/climate social mania.”
We can only guess at the answer. I suggest looking at what Ehrlich provides to the Left to see why he’s popular: scientific-sounding prophecies of doom. Entertaining and politically useful!
But like most successful political tactics, doomsterism has become ineffective after decades of over-use. Hence the failure of the campaign to scare people about climate change. Ehrich and his ilk are still selling, but the public isn’t buying.

Larry,
Speaking of forgetting past predictions and “doomster forecasts” and such, one hopes you remember and will comment on your own, involving the eventual/inevitable loss of the so-called climate debate, by us overly intransigent folk on the “skeptical” side . .

John,(1) “one hopes you remember and will comment on your own”
You must mean my Smackdowns and Forecasts Fails page.
Please post the link to the page listing smackdowns to and forecast fails in your comments.(2) “involving the eventual/inevitable loss of the so-called climate debate, by us overly intransigent folk on the “skeptical” side ”
I said that the next bout of extreme weather — large events, or several big ones in a row — will tip the public opinion. Such weather is inevitable, eventually. When it happens we will see what happens. But until then this remains an open forecast.

Larry writes: “Rather than the climate end times, they look forward to the fascist dictatorship of the Trump.”
Since we’re on the subject of blobs, mobs, and the definition of other delightful jargon, can I point out the misuse of “fascist” is pet peeve? Right up there with using the word “liberal” to define totalitarian socialists?
Please everyone, take a moment to recall the term fascisti was invented to describe the political philosophy of “Il Duce” Benito Mussolini and fellow traveler of Hitler. The fascists were socialists who nationalized industry. Trump, so far, hasn’t declared socialist leanings or policy. Similarly, there is nothing either totalitarian or socialist implied by the definition of “liberal”; liberals are not socialists and socialists are not liberal. There are no examples of liberal socialist democracies. At all. Anywhere. All forms of socialism require central control of the economy and every single one sacrifices individual liberty (root form of “liberal”) for the interests of the collective.
Hey, I didn’t start mincing words, but if everyone else is OK with that, it’s on topic and I may as well have my say.

Larry,
“Please post the link to the page listing smackdowns to and forecast fails in your comments.”
I got nuthin’ to post . . but I don’t do much forecasting . . don’t recall being smackeddown per say, prolly just lucky though . . and maybe forgetful . . nobody’s perfect.
“I said that the next bout of extreme weather — large events, or several big ones in a row — will tip the public opinion.”
I’m talking about your several attempts to get people around here to see what you called “gridlock” as a bad thing . . which to me seemed somewhat wrongheaded. Gridlock is a good thing, I say, when trying to resist incremental power grabs, and the “normalization” of fighting what one sees as most likely a phantom threat.
Once the concession that it’s best to fight the threat at all is made, it becomes far more difficult to justify resistance to further efforts, it seems to me. The “burden of proof” aspect can become fuzzy when one has already granted de facto that it’s been met well enough to warrant action, which I don’t think it has been . . And frankly, at this point, I’m glad you were unsuccessful in getting much support for ending “gridlock” on the matter. Aren’t you?

Bartleby,
“can I point out the misuse of “fascist” is pet peeve?”
That’s important to remember! Fascist has become a meaningless insult, but refers to a real political system. As for the accusations against Trump, see The Left calls Trump a “fascist”, ignoring the many experts who disagree.
As Orwell warned us, misuse of political terms has bad consequences. Especially about fascism, and its virulent form, Nazi ideology.
Colonel Stok (Soviet secret police): “These Germans, sometimes I wonder how we managed to beat them.”
Vaclav (Czechoslovakian secret police): “The Nazis?”
Stok: “Oh, we still haven’t beaten them. The Germans, I mean.”
— From Len Deighton’s Funeral in Berlin (1964).

John,
“I’m talking about your several attempts to get people around here to see what you called “gridlock” as a bad thing . . which to me seemed somewhat wrongheaded.”
What an odd thing to say. But it nicely illustrates the widespread ignorance produced by the dysfunctional climate policy debate.
While we debate what the weather will be in 2050, the US is largely unprepared for the repeat of past extreme weather — perhaps the major effect of the gridlocked climate policy debate. Historically commonplace weather events like “Superstorm” Sandy and Hurricane Katrina devastated cities.
Even more absurd, category one hurricane Irene caused damages of $16 billion in 2011. Category two hurricane Ike caused $28 billion in 2008. Eventually a cat 3 – 5 will hit a major city, from Miami to New York — with catastrophic results.
We almost as unprepared for the repeat of other extreme weather events. But I’m confident that we’ll mobilize well — and restart the debate — after some inevitable event hits America. The tuition might be high for that learning experience.

“While we debate what the weather will be in 2050, the US is largely unprepared for the repeat of pastextreme weather — perhaps the major effect of the gridlocked climate policy debate.”
So, if climate alarm skeptics had stopped debating with the climate alarmists, we’d be way better off, you figure, Larry? . .
Well, like I said, I’m glad you were unsuccessful in getting much support for ending “gridlock” on the matter.

Markl.
“No, they won’t adapt …”
About climate change, probably not. But in a larger sense they already have adapted! For the past several years good Leftists casually spoke of human extinction — appeared in articles and comments on almost any subject. I collected some samples here, starting with this (relatively mild doomsterism):

“I think looking at grief is quite appropriate, as I believe we are facing human extinction.”

But Leftists are Americans, and so quickly adapt. Rather than the climate end times, they look forward to the fascist dictatorship of the Trump. Assistant professors of history see concentration camps in their future (e.g., here, here, and here), and say “I don’t actually have confidence that we will have a functional democracy by 2020.” Ezra Klein gives us a similar, and equally unfounded, warning: “Imagine if he were to refuse to accept the outcome of the next election once he is the president, and after he has appointed loyalists to control America’s security apparatus.”
I have confidence in the Left! When 2020 arrives and the Republic still stands, they will have amnesia over their many failed forecast of 2016 — as they have forgotten their many equally ludicrous past predictions.

“If current trends continue by the year 2000 the United Kingdom will simply be a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people, of little or no concern to the other 5-7 billion inhabitants of a sick world. … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
— Paul R. Ehrlich in London at the Institute of Biology in Autumn 1969. From “In Praise of Prophets” by Bernard Dixon in the New Scientist, 16 September 1971.

I think you’re misusing anarchist.
Definition of anarchist
1 : a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power
“dedicated, organized and funded”; Funding generally coming from government; I see more at fascist.

What would happen if enough electors switched to give HRC the 271 electoral votes needed?
What kinds of pressure activities are taking place with electors if any or is this just media talk?
Such as the public “shame game”?

Barbara, there is only one announced “faithless elector”, a fellow from Texas, and he might be a mole. He was discovered to have invented his career as a firefighter–allegedly a first responder to the Pentagon attack from a fire department he joined a month after the attack and never responded to the Pentagon anyway.

Barbara,
37 electors are unlikely to change their vote to Hillary. She’s out of the picture. The major effort to sway the electors has been asking them to shift their vote not to Hillary, but to anyone other than Trump. If Trump gets fewer than 270 votes, then the Republican controlled US House of Representatives decides the winner. Should the US House also prove faithless… I have no wish to bring myself to tears by contemplating any scenarios beyond that point.

Alan Robertson,
That video is really quite disturbing.
This handful of self-appointed actors have decided the Trump is the first person in US history to have won the election but not to be eminently qualified to hold office.
Imagine what they would have said if there had been a similar campaign to persuade the electors not to vote for someone who whilst holding high office broke Federal law, and that someone just happened to be on their side.

….and both would be just about as devastating. (However, do we see as many asteroids on this collision course as the constellation of screwed-up, egomaniacal stars nearing political burnout? I think not.)

@texasjimbrock: If no one wins the electoral college, I don’t know that I would call it a constitutional crisis. Our Founding Fathers added a mechanism to the Constitution if this should happen. If it does, the House of Representatives will choose the next president. I read an article about it 2 or 3 months ago, and the name that came up in this scenario is House Speaker Paul Ryan.
This happened once back in the early 19th century (1824 I think?). Maybe we’re overdue for it to happen again, and maybe we’re not. Time will tell.

If no one wins the electoral college, I don’t know that I would call it a constitutional crisis.

Now you could call it whatever you want to, ……. but I would think that a massive “outbreak” of anarchical deeds n’ actions by the Trump supporters ……. would be considered by most as being a “constitutional crisis”.
The past protests, riots, burning and pillaging by the blacks would seem like a Sunday School picnic ……. compared to what will happen iffen they try to steal the 2016 election away from Donald Trump.

There would be no constitutional crisis. This possibility is covered under Amendment 12 to the Constitution.
In 1824 there were 4 presidential candidates receiving electoral votes: Andrew Jackson with the most electoral votes, followed by John Quincy Adams, Samuel Crawford, and Henry Clay.
The selection went to the House, where Henry Clay, Speaker of the House, was out of luck since only the top three contenders are to be considered under the 12th amandment.
The House chose Quincy Adams despite the fact that he got fewer votes than Jackson. Quincy Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State whereupon Jackson supporters claimed fraud and collusion on the part of Quincy Adams and Clay. Quincy Adams had a rather unsuccessful presidency as a result, getting little support from Congress. in support of proposed legislation.

The electoral college had a previous time when they could not elect a president, it would have been because there was no clear winner as voted by the people. The electors are not required to vote for anyone in particular, but they do have a moral obligation to reflect the will of the people that they represent. In a morally corrupt society, I suppose, that has no significance, but I would be watching the financial history like a hawk of any elector that chose not to vote for who the people he or she represents wanted. Money talks far more than I like.

Absolutely on nobody’s list, why do people have such a fascination with that?! You know, very soon a would-be president has to take over office, and as such, prepare for it is as every select ever has prepared for it — now, if Hillary believed even for ONE SECOND that it could be her at all, she obviously would be in preparations, would present her team, etc, etc… none of the people pretending Hillary could somehow be president asks or urges her to get her team together (which would be only logical and natural), nobody asks any potential team member where they are, who they are, what they intend to do… because – hello-HELLO-OOOO !!! There is no such thing. Literally. If you were a Hillary-friendly media outlet or persona, you would want to know by the 18th of December where the hell her team is and how her preparations are going – if you think that the “electoral college fixing things” is somehow a natural progression from here on… but they don’t.

“I can’t see humans existing within 10 years. We can do nothing to stop the planet becoming too hot to grow food and support life. It is already happening and we have less than a decade left.” — Guy McPherson (Prof of Biology, U AZ, retired)
Too bad he said that recently, we’ll have to wait 10 years to prove him wrong on this one! 🙂
I’m not a Trump supporter, but a “hoax invented by the Chinese”, to beat the US economically, is one of the best descriptions of AGW I’ve ever seen.
Climate activists are not scientists and have never been.

Yes, the utter preposterousness of this quote:
“I can’t see humans existing within 10 years. We can do nothing to stop the planet becoming too hot to grow food and support life. It is already happening and we have less than a decade left.”
is one of the big reasons why the majority of people do not take AGW seriously. I propose that as skeptics we encourage and publish as many of these kind of quotes as possible – and then when their prophetic time period has lapsed – publish again the failure of said prophecy.

CAGW/CACC is an environmental crisis hoax invented and institutionalized [UNEP/IPCC] within the UN machinery by Canadian old school Prairie Marxist Maurice Strong in the late 1980s. It coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall/Soviet Union and replaced traditional anti-capitalist Marxist doctrine with a new program to destroy the modern Western industrialized societies [Strong’s very own words at the 1992 Rio UN environmental conference] in the name of protecting the environment.
This concerted strategic effort then deliberately hijacked the necessary branches of science toward its authoritarian socio-political and economic goals in a program that from the outset formulated the restrictive parameters of the [IPCC led] “scientific” review” and thus ensured the targeted outcomes. In well honed authoritarian manner the unaccountable “apparat” placed what Lenin aptly called “useful idiots ” in key positions in the science management structure to silence anyone questioning the CAGW doctrine.
Examples of similar ideologically driven “scientific” hoaxes includes Lysenkoism and the eugenics movement.
There are signs not just in the US but in Europe and elsewhere that the human CO2 driven CAGW/CACC “apparat” will probably meet its political end over the next couple of years, but that does not mean that the underlying authoritarian ideology will have been overcome. Those wedded to it will fabricate new hoaxes -environmental or otherwise – and work to establish a new unaccountable socio political control “apparat to further their ideology.

Tetris.
Some interesting thoughts, some of them could be true. The part about it being a program to destroy Western industrialized societies doesn’t sound right, however. Because any person or group with the intelligence and resources to orchestrate a plot like you outline, must realize that it leads directly to an agrarian society; back to the good old days where average life expectancy was 35 years, infant mortality was around 40%, and people spent their short lives digging in the dirt or killing each other in groups. Right now technology is moving forward at amazing speed (a bio-medication came out last year that is 95% effective against Leukemia), this is only possible in a highly industrialized society. Therefore: If your hypothetical group is successful in their stated endeavor, and manage to DE-industrialize the world, they lose the benefits of living in an industrialized society. If they are just trying to De-industrialize the western world to conquer it, they will have to Re-industrialize it afterward and that seems like a highly inefficient use of resources. It would be much simpler just to invent a crisis to keep people voting for a candidate that you control (all of them).
In the United States you have the illusion of choice, you vote conservative and the weather will kill you or you vote liberal the Islamic terrorists will kill you. Meanwhile both sides are taking half of your money to keep these things from killing you.

But given its Marxist root objective of destroying the advanced Western [capitalist] economies, it is a fact that it has not been lost on the Chinese that it would be to their advantage to pay lip service to the environmental imperative of strangling Western use of hydrocarbon energy sources and thus driving up crucial energy costs, all the while becoming the largest producer and user of the cheapest one of those energy sources – coal.

Please note that none of those states requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, simply a government ID, such as a driver’s license which in those states are issued to anyone with a utility bill to their name. If you were an illegal in California facing Trump, would you register and vote illegally?

Alex, CA doesn’t require a government ID, only a mailing address. I know this from recently registering in CA (last October). I didn’t even need a permanent mailing address. A temporary address and a signature. That’s it.
I did that on purpose by the way, just to see exactly how porous CA state voting regulations are. I actually have two (count ’em two) properties I own outright in CA and hold a US passport. No one asked to see proof of either.

That picture is very misleading. For starters Clinton got the majority of votes so the blue
regions have almost 50% of the population of the USA. The population of the USA is urban
and so a county level picture is very misleading — Democracy is about “one person
one vote” not “one acre one vote”. Also the blue regions provide 64% of the GDP of the USA
again suggesting that there are a lot of people there and very few in the rest of the country.

“That picture is very misleading.”… No, that’s by county. Electoral votes are by county, not individual. This is the fifth time in US history the electoral votes were not the majority of voters and the system was designed that way to protect the people from mob rule.

“The population of the USA is urban…”
That is indeed the problem: the urbanites trying to tell us rural folk how to manage our acreage.
“Democracy is about ‘one person one vote’…”
“Democracy is about ‘one CITIZEN one vote’…” There, fixed it.

If the urban centres on the east and west coast were simply deprived of the food, energy and water that is generated by the rural areas, you would see an end to the democratic party within about 6 weeks.
The rise of socialism per se is the rise of the urban and suburban lower and middle classes, who are now almost completely divorced from the realities of wealth production. They are net consumers, sustained only by their ability to act in a service capacity, and occasionally entertain. In practical terms they are pure parasites.
I strongly suspect this is an unstable situation and I fear that these urban masses’ days are numbered.
Restoring a stable society will be dramatic and possibly emotionally devastating. And result in huge loss of life.
Using adequate hi tech I estimate that the same level of economic activity in my own country, England, could be sustained with 10% of the current population, who would be 10 times more wealthy.
This of course raises the questions of which 10%, and what happens to the other 90%.

You could go further Mr Smith and suggest that just London and the South-East could run the whole of the UK. Outside of that area there are very few places that make a positive financial contribution. Add those areas of successful manufacturing to the South-East and that would be it.

>>They are net consumers, sustained only by their ability
>>to act in a service capacity, and occasionally entertain. In
>>practical terms they are pure parasites.
Historically, not true. The urbanites used to make the tools and technology, that the land-rakers and land-hewers used, to gather the raw materials of life. That the urbanites used. So it was a two-way street.
The only trouble is that in the last 20 years, the urban elite have sold off that manufacturing cabability to China, in return for ever cheaper goods, and so now the urbanites are parasitical on both the rural and Chinese populations.
It is not a socio-economic system that can last, in the long term.
Ralph

”The rise of socialism per se is the rise of the urban and suburban lower and middle classes, who are now almost completely divorced from the realities of wealth production. They are net consumers, sustained only by their ability to act in a service capacity, and occasionally entertain. In practical terms they are pure parasites.”

Right you are, Leo Smith, extremely great “observational” qualities you possess. Of course your great “observational” qualities wouldn’t be worth a “hoot” without your nurtured mental attributes of common sense thinking, logical reasoning and intelligent deductions.
And that NON-producing “service capacity” that you mentioned, …… is not limited to the “part-timers” and “minimum-wagers”, ….. but also includes 98% of all federal, state, county and city employees (which also includes all Public Education employees).

“Democracy is about “one person one vote” not “one acre one vote” ”
Germinio
December 17, 2016 at 9:31 pm
Civics 101, Germinio, The United States is not a democracy, it’s a representative Republic. As such the people that live in the vast majority of the country (the “flyover” territories) get to be represented and heard instead of the people packed in small urban islands running the show and telling them how to live.

In the days of slow communication, it was necessary for decision makers to cluster together.
Now that communication can occur at the speed of light, this clustering is no longer necessary.
Wealth generation has more to do with access to good ideas than it does to access to raw materials.
As a result, highly profitable companies can be formed anywhere in the country. Urban areas exist more due to inertia than need.

Geronimo,
The one aspect that is missed is that the Red areas could get along relatively well with survival if the blue areas populations dissapeared. The reverse is not true. The blue area populations would descend into an utter hell-on-Earth if the Red area (farms, ranches, energy) populations disappeared.

It’s not misleading, it’s telling. It tells the country is divided. It tells about people in cities who feel they are better than others. It tells about revenge and reversal. It tells what happens when you push your agitprop too much.
I suggest you take hat off your head and apologise and then start being honest. Clinton is no honest, but some backers could be.
The nation has big problems, but the problem is not climate change, carbon pollution or lbgt rights. Really. Education, health expenses and work / income, not necessarily in this order, are. Put your power on important things, not on making communism using agw as vehicle.

In reply to Markl:
Lincoln got less than 50%-1
Hayes got less than 50%-2
Benjamin Harrison got less than 50%-3
Wilson got less than 50% in 1912-4
Kennedy got less than 50% of the vote-5
Nixon in 1968 got less than 50% of the vote-6
w. Clinton got less than 50% of the vote twice-8
Bush got less than 50% of the vote in 2000-9
Trump got less than 50% of the vote-10
So in actuality there were 10 elections when the winner did not have a MAJORITY of votes.
LIncoln, Wilson, Kennedy Nixon in 1968,, and Clinton in both races, received a PLURALITY, not a MAJORITY of the vote.
That leaves Hayes, B. Harrison, Bush, and Trump, a total of four who received less than a plurality of the vote. You may be including John Quincy Adams in 1824 when some, but not all, states.selected electors by popular vote. If included, that would bring the total of minority presidents to 11.

Actually Geronimo, democracy isn’t the political system the USA is founded on, it’s a Republic, not a Democracy. Yes, “one acre, one vote” is exactly what the founders envisioned. That’s what a Republic is.

It doesn’t. HRC’s margin in California alone was 4.5 million votes, and her plurality in the national popular vote was less than 3 million, so for 49 states (and DC) Trump’s margin was more than 1.5 million votes. How many of the California votes came from illegal aliens, criminals, and dead people? With sanctuary cities and basically no enforced southern border, CA has become a one-party state; it should surely not determine the winner of our national election.

And look at where the votes came in for HRC in California. The blue counties are in SF and LA and along the Mexican border. Considering that it takes really only a drivers license to vote in California and almost 1 million illegal aliens are known to have legal drivers licenses in California, it is not difficult to see that the popular vote in California should not pick the President for the rest of the USA.

James, one more time; a driver’s license isn’t required to vote in CA. All you need is an address and a signature. The address isn’t verified. You don’t need to present a water bill or anything else with your name and address on it to register.
Trump has said he will deport illegal residents who break the law. Each voter registration requires the voter to testify they are a legal US resident. Fraudulently claiming to be a US resident is a violation of State and Federal law. It seems if Trump wants to “drain the swamp”, all he need do is task immigration with tracking down all the people who perjured themselves on those documents and put them on a bus.

Grey, reading comprehension 101: no-one said monarchy. A representative republic (which the US is) does not mean democracy (which the US isn’t). Some remedial civics 101 for you since you so spectacularly failed civics 101 already: In the US system, the states, not the people, actually elect the president through the electoral college (perhaps you’ve heard of it?). The individual states can choose how they select their electors, they’ve each chosen to use the majority vote of the citizens of the their state. There’s no requirement that they have to do it that way, and indeed, in that past not all of them did (one common method in the past was for the state legislature to choose the electors rather than popular vote).

John and Grey, reality sometimes gets in the way of your theoretical discussion of the the structure of the government of the USA. The reality is that the USA is a plutocracy. Look at the net worth of our president-elect, the men he’ll put in his Cabinet, Then look at the net worth of our Congresspeople. How many plumbers, electricians, factory workers or housewives are in Congress? Hey, how many minimum wage workers get elected to office?

Bartleby, thanks for the information. I see from your comments above that you have checked this out personally. I was basing my statement on published research about the stated CA procedures from others. Your personal verification of actual procedures means that the problem is far worse than stated by me and others commenting on this post. Clearly, the popular vote totals reported in CA are a sham at best, if one considers that those totals are purported to be totals of votes of the living citizens of the state. To use those fraudulent popular vote totals to determine the result of the US Presidential election would be the destruction of our democratic republic.

It does not. Given the structure of the US presidential electoral system it is the plurality/majority at the Electoral College level that does. Which -because they lost- is what continues to give the borderline anti-democratic Democrats heartburn…

As global temps continue to defy worst case scenarios, as recent research and observation suggests low sensitivity to CO2, the Left has continued to double down on shrill speculation and nonsense. I expect this nonsense to be voiced louder and more ridiculous by the science illiterate press during a Trump presidency.

“I expect this nonsense to be voiced louder and more ridiculous by the science illiterate press during a Trump presidency.”
I can hear the MSM questions now: “President Trump, how can you reasonably dispute that Climate Change is real when 97 percent of scientists say it is happening right now?
Next question: But Mr. President, what about the 97 percent of scientists?
Next question: President Trump, why do you think you know more about the climate than 97 percent of scientists?

A nice comeback question, in the fun strategy of answering a question with a question, would be: would you kindly provide the list of names for the 97% consensus?
There used to be a popular tactic of saying X number of species are going extinct this year because of Y. The numbers were quite high. The catch was that no one could list the species that disappeared. It was all made up.

Response by President Trump: What I do know is that 97% of scientists wouldn’t even agree that it is a good idea to pee when one gets up in the morning. Having spent nearly 40 years in academe, and can assure you that many of the most mundane/insane “discussions” I ever witnessed occurred in the science faculty lounge.

One of the first things which needs to happen if our political processes are to become even remotely honest, is to reverse the colors associated with the two principal parties in the US. The reason the colors were assigned as they are, was subterfuge from the start.

The first presidential election to be broadcast widely in color TV DID have GOP states in blue and Dems in red. The not-so-subtle connection of red with international Communism forced the networks (even then strongly anti-anti-communist) to switch colors four years later.

The meaning of a color is in the eye of the beholder.
I am proud to be a supporter of “red” blooded Americans who believe in Freedom.
I cannot support the icy, intolerant, “blue” blooded elites who want to take our Freedom away.

There were no questions about climate change in the presidential debates. Clinton said little about climate change during the entire campaign. Accordingly, Gallup found that environmental issues were not in the top 12 issues people associate with Clinton. There are good reasons for this. Climate change has consistently ranked near the bottom of the US public’s major policy concerns.

This shows that there is no reason for Trump to go soft and tilt left on climate.
Some might reply to my point: “WHAT?? Trump has hired a slew of skeptics and shows no sign of wavering.”
Um, no sign? Other then Trump saying a couple weeks ago “I’m not sure now whether I’ll keep us in the Paris Climate Accord” and then a few days later nominating a warmist and Paris Accord cheerleader for Sec of State (and the SoS would likely play a key role on the Paris Accord).
Some say “But (SoS nominee) Tillerson will not defy Trump.” Yes, but my concern is … Trump.
Believe me, it doesn’t matter if the EPA and DOE is run skeptics if we remain in the insane Paris Accord. Staying in the Paris would mean that the leftist climate loons won! Here we get are great hope Trump, and we still lose?
On Tillerson:
Tillerson’s saying he believes the leftist science yet saying “BUT I don’t think the debate should stop” is little consolation and is consistent with what Republican warmists like Chris Christie and John Kasich say. But what ISN’T consistent with Republican warmists is Tillerson’s apparently enthusiastic acceptance of the Paris Climate Accord. ALL Republicans warmists like Kasich rejected the Paris Accord. Honestly, because Tillerson embraces the Paris Accord it makes me think he’s in reality a Democrat.
Two days after Trump’s election Exxon tweeted “The Paris agreement is an important step forward by governments in addressing the serious risks of #ClimateChange.” Tillerson certainly signed off on that.Rex Tillerson Oct 2016: “At ExxonMobil, we share the view that the risks of climate change are serious. Addressing these risks requires broad-based, practical solutions around the world. Importantly, as a result of the Paris agreement, both developed and developing countries are now working together to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.”
Btw, Oil companies BENEFIT from the climate idiocy.
Because it kills coal … and oil is a substitute.

Also, highly regulated industries tend to also be dominated by large oligopolies and lots of crony capitalism. The regulatory hurdles are a powerful barrier to entry that big companies like Exxon appreciate, since it means less competition. I’m sure such statements were just out of self interest and practicality, not based on his true beliefs. If Rex gets confirmed, and I don’t think it’s a slam dunk, I’m sure he’ll think differently on the subject.

imamenz “If Rex gets confirmed I’m sure he’ll think differently on the subject [of the Paris Accord].”
That’s seems like wishful thinking at best.
It’s going to be a real spin of the roulette wheel with Tillerson. I don’t think we’ve done everything we’ve done all these years … just to the warmists triumph by having us stay in the Paris Accord.
You have to try to come up with some kind of epicycle style excuses to explain Tillerson’s patently leftist words on climate change. Most all Republicans do not share Tillerson’s views so it would be easy to find a good replacement.
I see we put the pressure on, saying that Tillerson is not going to cut it.
OR we need an explicit statement from Trump, and Tillerson, that the two of them are not going to betray us on the Paris Accord.

Then I noticed an interesting feature. The percentage contributions of oil and coal tend to move in opposite directions. Coal goes down, oil goes up. Oil goes down, coal goes up. Oil goes flat, so does coal. But neither oil nor coal show a clear overall relationship with the third major source of energy, natural gas. The suggestion is that oil and coal have been substituting for each other, with coal replacing oil or oil replacing coal depending presumably on market conditions at the time, but with gas remaining largely unaffected.

So oil substitutes for coal when the market goes against coal.So oil does benefit from the bs climate accords. That’s probably why that Exxon guy Tillerson is a big proponent of the Paris Accord.

gnomish Nice chart. It certainly would be good for us to be able to say that oil benefits from the climate garbage, because that would completely defeat the warmist argument that it’s oil companies that drive skepticism.
That would be huge if we could say that oil BENEFITS from the climate bs.
Why is Tillerson a leftist on climate change? Why then is he for the Paris Accord when even all Republican warmists (as Kasich, Christie) were against that accord?? It seems to me only Democrats were for the Paris Accord so I don’t think we want that as our Sec of State.
Also, Jo Nova just wrote this:

“If Tillerson was passionate about CC he would have turned Exxon into BP or Shell. He would profit from carbon trading and imposts that stop coal competing. He’s had years to turn Exxon into a pandering gas company and he didn’t.” -Jo Nova

I’m not really sure what she’s talking about, but she implies that oil companies CAN benefit from climate change restrictions and coal’s defeat, if they take the right steps. She was defending Tillerson there, though, and saying that Exxon hasn’t done that.

i don’t think that coal and oil are really competing for the same market
Coal and gas are (I mean natural gas, not gasoline, here).
Coal, gas and nuclear are the three ways (plus hydroelectricity) we have of powering everything that doesn’t move, so to speak, leaving it (oil) as the energy source for stuff that does.
Renewable energy is only possible at all because of fossil fuel powered manufacturing – an ‘all renewable’ industrial society would collapse.
There is no really effective substitute for oil as far as mobile power sources go. It’s got far better energy density, even allowing for conversion inefficiencies, than any battery available or in the pipeline.
Which is why it’s laughable to suppose that Big Oil supports climate scepticism. It has nothing to lose and a lot to gain supporting climate nonsense. So long as people want cars and planes they will use oil. As long as they smack coal and nuclear on the head, they will need natural gas to fill in where renewables constantly fail to deliver.
Of course Exxon knew – that climate change was a fraud, and renewable energy a crock of wombat turds. They also knew that it wouldn’t affect their profits at all, and might even increase them.
The people most affected by ‘climate change’ politics are consumers, who get expensive energy and environmental disasters like solar panels and windmills, and coal. And Big coal is massively disadvantaged.
Nuclear ought to benefit from ‘climate change legislation’, but one presumes the gas lobby – as evinced by Enron and Al Gore – got to the environmentalists first and persuaded them that Nuclear Was Evil etc etc.
Oil and especially gas interests were behind climate nonsense from the start, once they realised (and I briefly was aware of that process of realisation when I attended a seminar on alternative energy in the late 90s) that alternative energy was essentially uncompetitive, and almost totally ineffectual. They all dabbled with biofuels, and with the ‘hydrogen economy’, for green credentials, before quietly ditching it.
They could afford to support it, knowing their profits would scarcely be affected by renewable energy, because basically renewable energy didn’t actually really work. And climate change wasn’t actually man made.

Eric: That is disturbing and powerful evidence that Tillerson might want to try to continue to promote AGW (via the Paris thing). It is also possible indication of Trump’s needing to get up to speed on the facts about human CO2 emissions — he’s a quick learner, so, if he is truly open to learning, this won’t be a problem.Regardless of your well-stated point, however:
The Paris Accord is NOTHING unless it is ratified by the Senate as treaty. It is not binding on anyone. Once the Obama executive agencies such as the EPA are run by those committed to observation-based science, they won’t be implementing the PA de facto, either.
The Paris Accord was DOA. And the U.S. Senate will not resurrect it.
Rejoice!
#(:))

Good points, Janice.
Fox News seems to have gone left on climate change, and I say O’Reilly making a pitch for Trump to stay in the Paris Accord. Why’s he doing that?
Maybe you’re right about the Senate, but many were saying it actually would take Trump a lot of work to get out of the P Accord, as if we’re already bound to it without the Senate approval. I don’t know. I remain leery of Carbon Tax Tillerson.

Businessmen like Tillerson have no political conscience. People need to understand who Trump is surrounding himself with for the most part. Businessmen or business like men and not career politicians. Trump’s team will tow his line….not any party line because he has alienated himself from both sides. Good.
Isn’t that one big reason he was elected? Trump knows the economic impact of AGW and why it’s being pushed and has no reason to support it. None.

Exactly… if the TPP and the CPP plan is scrapped and the CO2 endangerment finding reversed the Paris accord in worth no more than the paper it is written on. If those three things happen, I personally will be resting much easier at night.

Eric: That is disturbing and powerful evidence that Tillerson might want to try to continue to promote AGW (via the Paris thing).

Now it is obvious to me that ya’ll just might be fergettin that it used to be, and still pretty much is, …… “political suicide” for any major business or corporation to PUBLICLY deny CAGW ….. because the MSM and wacko lefty-liberal greenies would stage protests and boycotts along with “front-page-news” that would cause dastardly harm to the profitability of the offending corp.
I don’t think that EXXON-Mobile wanted any part of the “badmouthing” being heaped upon the Koch Bros. And Tillerson’s promoting of being “CAGW friendly” insured that it wouldn’t.
A really great CEO makes “logical decisions” that best benefit the corporation.
The “glass ceiling” complainers are best noted for their “emotional decision” making.

still pretty much is, …… “political suicide” for any major business or corporation to PUBLICLY deny CAGW

Then why didn’t Tillerson just keep quiet about the issue?
It seems that Tillerson has gone way out of his way to proclaim how devoted he is to climate nuticism.
And many “Tillerson isn’t sincere about AGW: that’s just what oil companies have to do.” A lack of sincerity is not good either.
This is the issue that’s important to us and SoS arguably would play the key role on it (as the Paris Accord). Why don’t we get someone where the argument in his favor is not “he’s insincere.”

“Then why didn’t Tillerson just keep quiet about the issue?” I’ll repeat myself…..business people have no political conscience. Their job is to make money and will do whatever is either necessary in their position or they are told/paid to do. If supporting a cause gives a business a competitive edge or appeases the shareholders they will usually comply. This is why people shouldn’t get all worked up about any of Trump’s picks that are business people and not politicians. They are goal driven and only make nice when necessary to attain a goal. They will love not having to be PC anymore in the board room or to the public and aren’t conniving to be elected for anything.

Eric SimpsonMarkl stated it precisely when he told you that …… “Their job is to make money and will do whatever is either necessary in their position or they are told/paid to do.”
Now I remember, t’was back in the early 70’s, I was at the Vancouver Airport, returning from a 3-week hunting trip in the BC bush …… and the President of Greenpeace, along with a group of “funny” dressed environmentalists, were engaged in a loud protest for the benefit of the News media and TV cameras, against us hunters and the killing of game animals.
A member of my hunting party jumped up and said he was going to ask that SOB Pres of GP why the ell he was leading a protest against hunting, and off he went. And when he came back, he didn’t say a thing, so we ask him, ……. “What did the Pres tell you after you chewed him out in lavender?”
Hans looked at us and said, ……. “What he said to me was ….. that he gets paid $100,000/year, plus expenses, ….. to do a job, ….. and by damn that is what he was doing,”
And don’t forget, …. a $100K salary in 1970 was damn good money.
Cheers

With Obama and the rest of the greens controlling the executive branch and the media being green. “Big oil” is always evil to them. If Tillerson would have publicly shot down the religion of man made climate change , how much media wrath and attacks by the Obama administration would have been launched against him and the company? I don’t have any personal knowledge of his beliefs, but I suspect they may be different than what he had to say as the head of an oil company.

It’s natural gas that is the substitute for coal in electricity production, not oil. In that sense a carbon tax benefits those that produce gas like ExxonMobil and one could view their position as self serving which is what they are supposed to do.
ExxonMobil’s “embrace” of the Paris Accord is nuanced and pragmatic, as is Rex Tillerson.

Forecast: Clinton will crush Trump in November:https://fabiusmaximus.com/2016/03/27/clinton-will-win-in-november-95355/“most of the polls put the race as fairly even” – MarkW
“(2) That’s not really correct. This close to the election, the polls and models are fairly accurate.” – Larry Kummer
The temperature measurements were adjusted to make Clinton seem much warmer than her real temperature. They were not “fairly accurate”.

Khwarizmi,(1) That was written in March, based on the information available at that time — before the email leaks. As Keynes said (in legend) — “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”(2) “This close to the election, the polls and models are fairly accurate.” – Larry Kummer”
And so it proved. The last average of 4-way polls tracked by RealClearPolitics gave Clinton a 3.2% lead. Most national polls have margins of error (sampling error) of +/- 3.0% to 3.5% at the 95% confidence level.
The current popular vote totals (most ballots are counted) show Clinton with a 2.1% margin (2.8 million votes) over Trump . That is well within the polls’ margin of error. Costas Panagopoulos (prof of political science, Fordham) analyzed the accuracy of the polls, using the early (too small) 1.9% estimate of Clinton’s win.
Pollsters seldom attempt to quantify other kinds of errors: Coverage Error, Measurement Error, and Non-Response Error. For details see this Cornell page about polling error. (Those familiar with climate scientists’ fantastically precise estimates of past weather — with astonishingly tiny error bars — know how this work.)
Predicting the electoral vote outcome is far more difficult (something pollsters didn’t tell us before the election). State polls have higher margins of error — often from 4% to 6%. See Drew Linzer‘s (statistician) analysis (especially the graphs). Small changes in the popular vote create large swings in the EC vote. Nate Silver shows how a 2% shift in the popular vote can create a landslide for either candidate.

I clicked on the link to this page and several others on the home page of WattsUp. Instead of this page (the others were ok) I found a request to update firefox that would have downloaded a .JS. I presume that this is malware and that it came from this site.
Am I the only one that had this happen?

I doubt that it is a real update:
1. It was not from Mozilla.org.
2. It was a javascript file as it had a .js file extension
3. This was the second time this happened and it was from a different web site.
thanks
jk

This happens to me on one computer I have but not 4 others. It’s not WUWT, it’s some sort of malware installed on the computer. It happens seemingly randomly when browsing any number of sites.
If reinstalling windows or restoring to a backup image of your computer is an option for you, I would strongly consider it. Those aren’t options for me, so I just tolerate the annoyance of having it pop up occasionally.
FYI, Firefox recommends several spyware/malware removal programs.https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware

Well, his Secretary of State and his older daughter who will fill in for the first lady are all in for this Catastrophic Human caused Global Warming stuff. I wouldn’t get too excited about it yet. Trump is “open minded” about climate change…We have to keep after him and his administration…

Whether or not Trump has a good grasp of real climate science, the fact that the Paris Boondoggle has the US passing out boodle by the tens of billions means it will have a short life. The intent to refocus NASA on space and the military on defense are indications that there won’t be too many Solyndras, either.

The Dems did not campaign on climate because they were so sure it wasn’t necessary and possibly confusing — even the ‘97% consensus’ is not easily explained, so they left it alone. However it will be appropriate to introduce the discussion when hearing on the matter of ‘advising and consenting’ the President on on the nomination of Pruitt, for EPA. We badly need a ‘re-set’ on the facts of this issue and the hearings would be an ideal time to introduce them.

“The Dems did not campaign on climate because they were so sure it wasn’t necessary and possibly confusing — even the ‘97% consensus’ is not easily explained, so they left it alone.”
When the debate gets started, all you will hear is “97 percent” from the alarmists and the MSM.
There is no need to explain “97 percent” beyond giving the impression that nearly every scientist on the planet believes in CAGW. You don’t have to be an expert to cite the “97 percent” argument.
We are going to be hearing “97 percent” a lot in the near future. It’s an easy argument that anyone can make. It is an appeal to authority, and people are swayed by appeals to authority, if they are not knowledgeable about CAGW.
One of the first things skeptics need to do in this argument is to debunk in a serious way this “97 percent” false narrative.
Perhaps a new survey of scientists would be a good way to proceed.
An update to the “97 percent”: Well, folks, we went out and did another survey, an honest one this time. and we found that instead of finding that “97 percent” of scientists support CAGW, it turns out that only 15 percent of scientists do.
This would be a better way than calling the alarmist a liar when they make these false statements, or trying to unravel the way the original “97 percent” survey was done for someone with no knowledge of the subject.
Bottom line: The “97 percent” will be thrown in skeptics faces right off the bat. We should have a good, understandable, simple answer to this appeal to authority.
No, that’s the old, flawed study, this new one doesn’t support the “97 percent” figure, it is a much smaller number, almost insignificant.
That would be a good retort (if we had a new study to cite :).

I just tell them that I agree with the 97%. The Earth has warmed over the past hundred years and mankind is partially responsible. That blows apart the appeal to authority and opens the door to changing the discussion parameters to empirical data.

“The Earth has warmed over the past hundred years and mankind is partially responsible.”
The Earth has warmed *and* cooled during the past 100 years; we are currently in a temperature downtrend from the 1930’s to the present day, and there is No evidence that humans are causing the climate to change by burning fossil fuels.

If you want to split hairs, the Earth has been warming since the little ice age ended in the 1600’s, well before Carbon forcing became fashionable. The questions that led to the 97% consensus meme were: Has the Earth warmed over the past hundred years and is mankind partially to blame? Those are statements that I agree with. The miscommunication happens when people confuse those statements with global warming theory and confuse global warming theory with catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming. Truth should not have to rely on confusion for proof and Science, first and foremost, is a search for truth.

Just realized that I didn’t precisely your concern about the precision of my statement. You are correct. Also, the climate has been on a net cooling since the Holocene Optimum. It is my sincere hope that carbon forcing is enough to overcome the next glaciation cycle.

“If you want to split hairs”
What I don’t want to have happen is for people to give a false impression that we have only experienced warming since (pick your industrial era date), implying that we are just getting “hotter and hotter” as time goes along. This is false. Implying it is not, gives others the wrong impression and promotes the CAGW narrative.

“The questions that led to the 97% consensus meme were: Has the Earth warmed over the past hundred years and is mankind partially to blame? Those are statements that I agree with.”
You are entitled to your beliefs, but I don’t know what you base your conclusion on.
I have been looking for a long time for evidence of humans affecting the climate, and to date, I have seen no evidence that humans are causing the climate to behave differently than it did before humans were involved.
There’s no evidence. It is true that CO2 could cause a slight warming of the atmosphere, but it can also be true that negative feedbacks might completely cancel CO2 effects out, and that appears to be the case today since there is noone who can point to anything specific as evidence of human intervention which causes the climate to behave abnormally. They can’t even define “abnormally”.

“There’s no evidence. It is true that CO2 could cause a slight warming of the atmosphere, but it can also be true that negative feedbacks might completely cancel CO2 effects out”
There is mathematical evidence that Carbon forcing in the atmosphere is approximately one degree Celsius per doubling of the CO2. I will believe in strong positive or negative climactic feedbacks the moment there is any actual proof, whatsoever. As for now, most of the arguments advocating CAGW theory are are easily dismissed with facts. It is the confusion of facts that is the enemy here.
Facts:
1) Holocene Inter-glacial.
2) 1 degree C per doubling of the CO2.
3) Every hydrocarbon theorized to be on Earth, without carbon sinks (worst possible case), would double the CO2 approximately twice (near 1,600 ppm [LD50 for CO2 is around 100,000 ppm]).
4) Every living thing on Earth needs Organic Carbon.
5) Every living thing on Earth needs Oxygen.
My own opinion, based on the provable facts is: More Organic Carbon plus more Oxygen (the two elements in CO2) plus more energy (heat) plus more water vapor (by-product of the warmer climate) equals more life.

TA there are a couple problems with your “soundly debunk the 97%” strategy I think.
First, you’d need to accept the idea that science is based on an opinion poll. It isn’t. Explaining that, in my experience, has been fruitless. Trying to get anyone to understand the difference between a consensus and a scientific consensus isn’t going to work on the broad population.
Second, people believe the statistics that support their beliefs and reject those that don’t. Anyone who disagrees with your sound debunking will quote Twain at you. End of argument.

“My fear is that some left wing green nut job is going to attempt an assassination.”
There are a lot of psychopaths out there in the world. When the Left turns Trump into a monster with their rhetoric, some psychopaths take them literally and a few may act on their impulses and delusions.
That’s what we are seeing with the shooting of police. The radical Leftist group Black Lives Matter promotes the idea with their protests, and the more deluded minds in our society take that as giving them justification and permission to carry out violence.
The harsh, dishonest, rhetoric from the Left is like poison to our society. It’s never been worse than now. They mislead too many people and cause no end of trouble for everyone by creating horrible false realities which they present as being the real world, using the MSM as their Big Megaphone.

TA writes: “some psychopaths take them literally and a few may act on their impulses and delusions.”
I give you in support the fellow who walked into a D.C. pizza parlor a few weeks ago and shot up the place because someone told him the Clinton’s were running a child sex-slave operation out of it. The of course there’s “Squeaky” Fromm.
No doubt the threat is real, and it gets more real with every article WaPo publishes.

“I give you in support the fellow who walked into a D.C. pizza parlor a few weeks ago and shot up the place because someone told him the Clinton’s were running a child sex-slave operation out of it.”
That’s a perfect example.

“They earned their failure. Depending on how the climate changes, we might all pay for it.”
That’s the paradox here. “They earned”, but “we might pay”. So why is it “they” and not “we”? What were “we” doing? That’s the thing about turning it into a spectator sport of US Left-Right politics. We actually have a stake in the outcome.

Nick,
Your comments are consistently odd, pretending not to understand simple things. As before, I’ll spell this out for you.
I said: “Plait’s behavior is typical of climate activists, and has helped poison the public debate. They earned their failure.”
Nick asks: “So why is it “they” and not “we”? ”
Because the subject of a verb is the person/group doing the action. “We” didn’t poison the debate, as have activists such as Plait — as I document in this and many other posts during the past 5 years.
Nick asks: “What were “we” doing?”
Most Americans were managing their own lives, depending on others to manage the public policy debate about key issues.
Nick says: “That’s the paradox here.”
No. There is no paradox here. Just your typical confusion..
Nick says: “That’s the thing about turning it into a spectator sport of US Left-Right politics.”
Most Americans lack the leisure time to get involved in individual political issues such as climate change. They rely on the people involved in these debates to thrash out the truth. That becomes difficult when people like Plait use their public bullhorns to hide the science — such as the scores of peer-reviewed articles about the “pause” (aka “hiatus”).

‘ “We” didn’t poison the debate’
So what did “we” do. My point is the passivity and fecklessness of it all. Plait annoyed us, so we’ll scoff at climate change, even though “Depending on how the climate changes, we might all pay for it.”.

Surely nick your not questioning why America voted the way they did ? Like oz and Britain the plebs have had enough of being told it’s hot when it’s cold and when it’s cold being told it’s hot , the money being wasted on green schemes and grand ideas does not go unnoticed.
Being unable to pay your electricity bill and put food on your table is in your face everyday and the decision makers don’t understand that until now .
We’re sick and tired of the same old crap from the top and want someone new , yeah we might get a dud but the message to the elites is loud and clear “change your ways now” or spend some time on the bench until you listen to the little man and understand where he’s coming from .

“plebs have had enough of being told”
That’s the passivity. We’re always being told. Why can’t we try to actually work something out? Who is Phil Plait. He’s someone who writes in Slate. You can find out something from him if you want. But if you don’t, find out from somewhere else. You’re not forced to listen to him.
And that’s the fecklessness of it. There may be a problem, but we’ll make our mind up on the basis that we don’t like Phil. Or elites, or whatever. We’re sick of “them” telling us. And as the Editor says, “we might all pay for it.”

Nick,
“Plait annoyed us, so we’ll scoff at climate change, even though…”
Try reading the post before posting silly comments about it. Especially read the section at the end with the header “Conclusions”. The post is about the behavior of climate activists, and provides practical recommendations for them.

Looking ahead, will climate activists learn from their mistakes? Will they abandon their reliance on doomster forecasts, and again build on the work of climate science and the IPCC (once they called the “gold standard” of climate science, now they say it is “too conservative”)?

The post is not about the behavior of the public. Only so much can be discussed in a thousand words.

Nick,
Your comments are consistently odd, pretending not to understand simple things
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair

Well, I can’t say what anyone else did or did not do. I can say that I write letters to my elected officials. I would be amazed if my Senator or Representative ever even hears of them, but I do try. I don’t have the time or patience to park my butt outside their doors demanding to be heard. So, I really have no need to wonder what I could do. I did at least try, and this “we” feels no shame over having done something rather than the nothing implied.
Maybe more should try the whole tell them directly thing. If the aides find enough physical or electronic mail pushing for action, they will listen. They may not do anything, but they will notice.
No offense intended to anyone. I’m just stating what I did, since the question was asked.

“Plait skips all these vital complexities, going from the consensus about past warming to boldly assert that “Climate change is already one of if not the biggest threat our species has faced.” He gives no evidence for this because there is so little.”
Actually, there is No evidence humans are causing the climate to do anything out of the ordinary.
Hinting that there is even a little bit of evidence will lead people astray. Don’t do it.

It’s not so much three states as three Cities. New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago votes for Clinton. The lion’s share of the actual country voted for Trump.
Of course, if you subtract the Chicago voters whose current address is something like “Plot A713, Forrest Lawn Cemetery,” Clinton’s entire plurality vanishes 😉 😉 😉

“ust throw out the California vote, and Trump wins the popular vote…”
Maybe we should encourage California to leave the U.S. and merge with Mexico. Then Republicans/Conservatives would have a lock on the U.S. presidency.

We could sell California to the Chinese. They would pay a down payment in the form of forgiving our sovereign debt, and finance the rest with a 30 yr ARM. Californians, (except for Anthony and a a few hundred other CA residents) would love this as they would immediately realize their dream of living in a communist totalitarian utopia.

If the Trump team wants to keep that map looking the way they made it the global warming hoax will
be one of the things that gets flushed .
$ Trillions spent and wasted on the bizarre notion that humans are going to adjust the earth’s temperature
to some prescribed average world figure . That huge lie on it’s own should just blow the scam out of the water .
Climate changes and any continued global warming is an overall good thing . If humans help well good
the plants , tree’s, animals and sea creatures appreciate it . We are not about to make the climate suit the human race so grow up and quit pissing away scarce resources .
More than anything this shows what a complete joke the monetary system is . No debt limits
and currencies backed by nothing but faith .

I keep saying (and posting) that the whole CAGW thing boils down to one simple statement: “Give the Government (any one) more money and we’ll change the weather”. Put it that way, and (almost) anyone can see CAGW for the furshlugginer scam that it is.

Do any of you learned souls know why the graphs of Arctic sea ice area seem to be about 4 days behind? It is crazy cold across the North right now. I expect the ice is growing 200,000 km per day or more. El nino is pretty much gone to space and the AMO has turned over. We’re in a new, colder period now! It’s unfortunate but it should at least put the lie to this AGW b.s.!

Yeah, it says that, but if you line up the graph field it looks like it stopped around the 13th. Just coincidence with severe cold driving rapid ice expansion at the moment that they cling to this lower than normal point?

Continual harping on the popular vote when the USA is a representative republic not a simple democracy merely demonstrates the disappointing lack of ‘civics’ understanding and teaching. I also note that the Democrats were relying on the ‘numbers’ of the Electoral College that they suddenly disparage. Indeed, they are demonstrating more and more while ‘We The People’ want rid of politicians.

I agree, and neither candidate ran campaign based on the popular vote. Besides, the “popular vote margin” is less than the estimates of skanky registered voters, as in 1.8 million dead, 2.8 million registered in more than one state, and not less than a million or so non-citizens.

Exactly. The US is a representative republic of states designed by the founders to prevent the “tyranny of the majority” that would result if it were a simple democracy. In a simple democracy, relying on the “popular vote”, even if the “popular vote” were not corrupted by fraud (a big if), would result in highly populated states dominating the remaining states. The deliberate confusion of spouting “one man(or woman), one vote” is an attempt to distort our form of government when it is now convenient for the left to do so. We are the United States of America, not United America.

“Climate change is both the Left’s signature initiative and its greatest failure (28 years with no change in the US public’s policy priorities about climate).”[snip . . . one strawman too many. Make your points about it not being a Left political initiative that is using some aspects of science to advance its cause and that it is not failing to increase its support base amongst the electorate. . . mod]

I thought my point was perfectly valid: demonstrating an inconsistency.
Hmm. From the Policy page:
“Respect is given to those with manners, those without manners that insult others or begin starting flame wars may find their posts deleted.”
Lots about manners but not much about strawmen – BTW, which I reject. If the mods are going to let not just bad manners but outright offensive abuse (don’t make me go and cut and paste it) to be posted, then that is also pretty inconsistent.

tony-
You’ve shown us repeatedly that strawman arguments and other logical fallacies are your stock in trade. You were recently exposed in another thread as one of those people who knows the truth about certain aspects of the climate debate, but uses well known tricks to deflect attention from that truth. That’s not the work of a dissenter, that’s the work of a propagandist.
Ps Since you started slinging threats, you better wake up and realize you’re standing in the middle of a two- way street.

It’s a bit odd that the “analysis” is presented from the point of view of how the climate consensus activists should repackage themselves, and not about how wrong they are on their substance. It would be much more ground breaking to admit that the skeptics, under funded, dismissed, disorganized, were right. The lefties are wrong basically always. Why do they control so much of the public attention?

Hunter,
“It’s a bit odd that the “analysis” is presented from the point of view of how the climate consensus activists should repackage themselves”
Why is that “odd”? It is a relevant subject, about which practical recommendations can be made.
“It would be much more ground breaking to admit that the skeptics, under funded, dismissed, disorganized, were right.”
You are welcomed to do so and submit it to Anthony. I write about what I want to write about, and you write about what you want to. I suspect you’ll find that topic requires a lot of work.

“The lefties are wrong basically always. Why do they control so much of the public attention?”
It’s because the Left controls the News Media, and the Entertainment Media, hunter. If you have the Big Megaphone of the MSM, you have enormous influence on the public discourse.
The MSM control the national conversation. Look at how even Fox News gets sucked into covering the issues the MSM bring up and present as important. That’s the News: Whatever the MSM says it is. So Fox News reacts and covers these stories and actually gives them some credence in the process, if they are not careful.
The MSM sets the stage. If they are dishonest or deluded, then they cause great harm to the nation and the world. At the present time, they are wrong most of the time. They are pushing a political agenda not the news.

@TA: “It’s because the Left controls the News Media”
Gareth Phillips wrote: “Not in the UK . Here the print media is overwhelmingly Conservative and right wing in it’s approach and opinion.”
Well, I’m not nearly as familiar with the UK news media as I am the U.S. news media. I read the Daily Mail online, and it doesn’t seem to be unfriendly to Trump, although they were making fun of him today for misspelling the world “unprecedented” in his latest tweet. He spelled it “unpresidented”. I assume he has been writing “president” for the last few weeks and got the two words confused. 🙂
The Daily Mail is the only publication I have read from the UK that I would consider halfway conservative, but all the others I look at occasionally are always bashing the Right, it seems to me.
And then there is the BBC walking lockstep with the Leftwing Media in the U.S. I think the UK is dominated by the Leftwing News Media, too, even if there are some conservative publications over there.

“Not in the UK . Here the print media is overwhelmingly Conservative and right wing in it’s approach and opinion.”
Only to people who believe the ‘Conservatives’ (who, amongst many other crimes, sold the UK into the EU) are right-wing.

Catweazle666
Some facts for you, just because you don’t like them does not make them any more accurate. By the way do you want a link for Torch sales at cheap prices? You would save a fortune on the Parades. ( that’s in response to your comment “Only if you’re standing somewhere to the Left of Vladimir Illich Lenin”)
Maybe you could post evidence of your own that the Newspapers in the UK are not mainly right wing? If so, first read this then tell me where is it wrong. If not, at least base your comments on a scrap of evidence.
– Conservative supporting publications are: The Sun (1,978,702), The Times (396,621), The Telegraph (494,675), the Daily Mail (1,688,727) and the Evening Standard (805,309). ( Right wing)
– The Daily Mirror (992,235) is the only newspaper which openly supports Labour. (Left wing)
– Richard Desmond set his titles,
The Daily Express (457,914)and The Star (425,246) to support UKIP. ( Hard right)
– The Guardian (185,429) was traditionally a Liberal newspaper, but takes an independent line, as do The Independent (61,338) the i (280,351), and the Financial Times (219,444). ( Wishy washy)
– And so, in comparison, for every Mirror (Labour) reader there are 5.4 readers possibly being influenced by the Conservative press.
In context of left / centre / right wing:
There are 33.66 copies of right wing newspapers for every sale of a left-wing one. What is more the Mail, Express and Star are far more right wing than the Guardian is left wing. They support openly fascist groups such as Front National, The EDL and Pergida.
UKIP , supported directly but the Express is also is in alliance with far right groups in the European parliament.

The climate economic bubble is about to burst. An economic bubble is what it has always been. The housing bubble, the university bubble (student loans) and the climate bubble all have the same thing in common — huge amounts of taxpayer money tossed into them. End the money and the bubble bursts.
The student loan program might have worked if a cap had been put on the size of the loans. The colleges and universities would have had to shape their workings to fit that reality. Instead colleges and university realized that they could demand as much money as they wanted and the government would simply up the loans. And like all bubbles the university bubble produces nothing of lasting value.The Tin Man in “The Wizard Of Oz” singing “If I Only Had A Brain” and then receiving a degree from the Wizard epitomizes what four years at our colleges and universities really amount to.
Well, the climate economic bubble is about to burst. Let those who strove so hard to destroy the jobs of others lose their jobs. Now that is what I call social justice.
Eugene WR Gallun

We’re running a very real risk of doing the same thing with health care in the US as we did with college education; pricing it out of reach for individuals.
Anytime the government gets involved in subsidizing a thing, the price is distorted and artificially increased. Doing that with education was very bad, doing it with health care will be lethal.

Happening to me now . because of high bp my ins is going from 800/mo to 975.. More than my house payment. What’ll it be next year ? The only thing I can come up with are creative ways to hide income. Or just don’t pay the damn bills.

Joe, seriously consider buying drugs from India or some other non-us source. Most high BP meds are out of patent. Atenolol and Amlodipine should cost pennies a day.
They can’t “cure” high BP. We’re all being rapped by government subsidized health care and that was the plan all along. Trump isn’t going to reverse it, the damage is done (as you’ve experienced and as I have). He might stop it from getting worse but I very much doubt he can roll it back. Obama screwed us blue then tattooed our asses. Everyone in the country with a “pre-existing condition” has now been weighed, measured and found wanting. Oh joyous day!

NO, AK, the laws didn’t change- negative feedbacks still exist and are cooling the climate; hurricanes and tornadoes are not increasing; the stratosphere is not cooling; both poles are not melting equally; the tropical hot spot has never materialized….

“I can’t see humans existing within 10 years. We can do nothing to stop the planet becoming too hot to grow food and support life. It is already happening and we have less than a decade left.”
— Guy McPherson (Prof of Biology, U AZ, retired).
Starvation, dehydration, disease, and exposure will lead the way, he said.
Mr McPherson cites scientific data including tipping points, positive feedback systems and exponential growth to back up his claims.
As that’s the case & the science is settled why do they keep asking for more grants & taxes ????
they should spend the next 10 years having fun.

“Climate change activism may have failed to convince the public but in the UK it has left the legacy of a failed energy policy costing £219 billion.”
Climate change activism has been just successful enough to screw everything up bigtime.

The one problem that folks here have overlooked is that the left control the mainstream media and the public schools. I know many otherwise normal people who have been told all their lives by “authorities” that CO2 warms the planet and that if we keep producing CO2 then the planet will keep getting warmer. This meme is ingrained in them now and I figure they will go to their grave believing that.
I think the reason the people (banned here) that attacked the CO2 controversy via thermodynamics was that they figure it will take a major sea change to deprogram the sheep. (but I could be wrong, as motive is hard to assign anytime)
I also did not see anyone mention that the Republican establishment hates Trump and worked against him the whole election cycle. I doubt they will wake up Christmas morning and love the guy. Trump has his work cut out for him.
And a final note while I am typing this morning. After studying this issue since the great “a new ice age is coming” scare of the 70s, I can say that the evidence is that CO2 should be about 3 to 4 times higher than what it is now for life to flourish. Plants love CO2 and so do people. Some endocrinologists claim that higher CO2 levels are protective of health. (I live at sea level so I hope that one is dead wrong!)

Eric Simpson is worried about Rex Tillerson. Mr Trump has proposed many climate skeptics to his cabinet, and Tillerson has run Exxon for the last 10 years when it has been a target for the left. Of course he has made some statements to defend his corporation. This is like the opposite of the journal Climate Research a few years ago. There were 9 out of 10 editors who were warmists. The exception was Chris De Freitas and the left wanted him out. Having a majority of 9 out of 10 editors wasn’t good enough for them. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/the-tribalistic-corruption-of-peer-review-the-chris-de-freitas-incident/
Now with a President Elect who is a skeptic, and with many skeptics nominated for cabinet positions, your worry is that Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon, is a problem? Are you really worried about one possible (unlikely) slightly warmist voice amongst a predominantly skeptic cabinet?
I suggest you find something else to stress about. Exxon produced a hard response to the made up story that they somehow knew definitively about climate change 30 or 40 years ago. They pushed back on the attack by a group of AG’s.
In my experience in the oil industry, there are obviously people within the staff who believe in climate change but probably the majority are skeptic. That is why some companies will have a renewables department, or will report their carbon footprint. Remember also that oil companies who retail gasoline have to consider their customers. All have to consider their shareholders, and so their public perception is important. That does not mean that someone like Tillerson is a warmist.

The comments are quite revealing and I must say:-
Steve Heins makes SPLENDID comment: his short summary is oh so true.
Eugene W R Gallun also (as usual) has it absolutely bloody SPOT ON.
As for the “language” comment from Steve Case, at 6.41 p.m. yesterday, he may well have a point. It is indeed ALL ABOUT the “language” !
The “language” trends of WUWT have their peculiarities in the “approving” and the “blocking” of certain words, however, the resulting “comments” are, and will of course only ever be mere opinion.
The following item is in the HUMOROUS history category and a little “off topic” but I just couldn’t resist it (again). The words are not mine; they belong to a famous person.
HE WRITES …
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.
The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was
precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France ‘s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.
Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”
The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbour” and “Lose.”
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels ..
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be right, Mate.” Two more escalation levels remain: “Crikey! I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!” and “The barbie is cancelled.” So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.
Regards,
John Cleese ,
British writer, actor and tall person
And as a final thought – Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC.
END OF PASTE.
Regards,
WL

Nice, Warren.
Just a head’s up: “The “language” trends of WUWT have their peculiarities in the “approving” and the “blocking” of certain words,”
That’s the doing of WordPress. Keeps the mods busy bailing comments out of jail.

The fall of Rome is of more concern now as it was the first time.
the Fall of Rome
1940
W H Auden
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

“You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. “ = Fake News
‘I can’t see humans existing within 10 years. We can do nothing to stop the planet becoming too hot to grow food and support life.’ = Fake news. “Fake News”: New name for propaganda.

I read Phil’s articles in Slate regularly. He’s great when he sticks to astronomy. Lately he’s been opting to write more AGW propaganda. He ought to know better. Well, he probably does. The earth is doomed, after all, but not because of CO2 in the atmosphere. There are a few questions I’d like to ask him. Probably several, but let’s start with these.
“Phil, do you think that Earth will ever have another ice age?”
“Phil, do you know for sure that the polar sea ice observations are not explained by cyclic phenomena such as AMO/PDO”?
“Phil, how come Earth didn’t burn up when the CO2 in the atmosphere was much higher than it is now?”

The so-called liberals have great contempt for conservatives. They think the conservatives are simple minded and incapable of analytical thought.
Here’s an article that points out that, fairly applying the same criteria, the liberals do no better than conservatives.

After people have apparently been searching for Left-Wing Authoritarianism for 30 years – a search so futile that is has been compared to the search for the Loch Ness Monster – we re-wrote the RWA questionnaire in 10 minutes and found consistent evidence of LWA. This leads me to wonder if our field is really trying that hard to find left-wing authoritarianism? It took us ten minutes.

Anyone who has seen the machinations of the social justice warriors will be surprised that there is any difficulty finding Left-Wing Authoritarianism. When all the people doing the research are left-wing, it is unsurprising that the results have a strong left-wing bias.

“When all the people doing the research are left-wing, it is unsurprising that the results have a strong left-wing bias.”
That also applies to the MSM. When all the people doing news are leftwing, you get a leftwing bias to the news.

I know with 97% certainty that the left is going to say we have this “green infrastructure” currently in place that consists of skilled labor, green companies, scientists, etc. and if Trump dismantles the infrastructure we are never going to get it back should we ever need it, on the basis it will be to expensive/impossible to recreate. The onus is then going to be put on the deniers to prove they will never need the “green infrastructure” and since they can’t prove that, the “green infrastructure” stays in place at standby at some percentage of what it was, say 33% funding or so.
Same argument when the USSR collapsed so we didn’t need submarines so much anymore, but the submarine program wasn’t completely such down because it was such a specialized area if it was shut down all the suppliers and expertise would go down with the ship and you would never get it back. And you cant prove you will never need subs again. So existing stuff in progress was finished and future stuff got scaled way back but not eliminated.
And this is probably why the warmists dont share information either, information is power and if information is shared and understood by many then you have a harder time making the above argument.

Scott I think that’s the extortion/blackmail approach. We either throw good money after bad or shut them down and let them find productive jobs. The second alternative makes the only sense economically; if we ever need them again we’ll pay for them in adjusted dollars sometime in the future. In the meantime we don’t pay them. This is exactly how NASA funds large projects so they should understand.

Depending on how the climate changes, we might all pay for it. It might be difficult to restart the debate if evidence appears suggesting the worst-case scenarios are happening.

But it is painfully obvious that the worst-case scenarios are *not* happening. The doomsday predictions have already failed. The recent freak El-Nino just gave the doomsters one more opportunity to fool the gullible, and they milked it for all it was worth. In the end, this will prove nothing more than a dead cat bounce.
There will be no need to “restart” the debate. “Catastrophic climate change” may at some point have been a defensible hypothesis, but in recent years it has turned into a baseless hysteria propped up by fraudulent science and cynical propaganda. It has already claimed far too much time in the spotlight. There are real problems in the world that concern real people, and which are in much more urgent need of debate. Trump won because he dared talk openly about some of them.

Michael,
“But it is painfully obvious that the worst-case scenarios are *not* happening.”
Because it is too soon. The worst case scenarios for the next 50 years or so are almost entirely built on RCP8.5 — the worst case of the four scenarios used in AR5. The CO2 emission levels forecast in the RCP’s do not differ significantly until after 2030. They have a range of 2% between best and worst by 2020, 5% by 2030, 18% by 2050, and 55% by 2100.
“The doomsday predictions have already failed.”
Since almost all of those in the peer-reviewed literature are based on RCP8.5, it is far too early to draw conclusions. The assumptions in RCP8.5 — esp about trends in technology and population necessary to produce such a high forcing level — look increasingly unlikey. But declaring “failure” is premature.

The new breed of leftists don’t know how to adapt. Look at Obama — he is incapable of compromise and anger/ridicule was his response to differing opinions. Expect doubling down from the left.
Security for Trump needs to be extremely tight.

In a way, the liberals are starting to wise up. Ever since the election we have been hearing folks telling us how the Democrat party betrayed the working class.
This morning I heard an interview with Michael Sandel. He points out that liberal democracies have lost their moral compass. In another place he points out that:

liberalism goes wrong when it becomes a morality of rules and abstract principles rather than a morality of purposes.

John Ralston Saul pointed out the same thing in Voltaire’s Bastards in 1992.
I suggest to all my liberal friends that they read Listen Liberal which well documents how the Democrat party betrayed the working class.
I think President Trump’s election may be the best thing that ever happened to the Democrat party. It’s just the kick upside the head that they need.

I have no hope that the Democrat Party will ever live in the real world. The weaker and less influential they are, the safer we are. Let’s hope they continue to implode.
I have heard a few Demcrats in the last few days, trying to make a fair accessment of what has happened to them, but only just a few. The rest are too busy hating Trump and the Right, for self-examination. They still think they have been cheated out of something.

The modern Democrat party is a loose collection of special-interest groups competing for power, plus the few working-class Americans who haven’t wised up yet. Trying to bring the working-class back would require abandoning most of their existing power base.

liberalism goes wrong when it becomes a morality of rules and abstract principles rather than a morality of purposes.

Do let’s look at this question honestly. Do liberals impose “a morality of rules”? No. Liberals don’t do that. Totalitarian socialists do that. So can we, at the very least, agree on basic terms?
———
liberal |ˈlib(ə)rəl|
adjective
open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values : they have more liberal views toward marriage and divorce than some people.
• favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms : liberal citizenship laws.
• (in a political context) favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform : a liberal democratic state.
• ( Liberal) of or characteristic of Liberals or a Liberal Party.
• ( Liberal) (in the UK) of or relating to the Liberal Democrat Party : the Liberal leader.
• Theology regarding many traditional beliefs as dispensable, invalidated by modern thought, or liable to change.

Bartleby December 18, 2016 at 10:19 pm
… So can we, at the very least, agree on basic terms?

Apparently not. Here’s another definition.

A liberal is someone on the left wing of politics — the opposite of a conservative. link

Here’s another.

Liberals believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all. It is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual and human rights. Believe the role of the government should be to guarantee that no one is in need. Liberal policies generally emphasize the need for the government to solve problems. link

Dictionaries usually don’t do a good job of keeping up with definitions as they change. One of my favourites is fulsome. Dictionaries have it meaning excessively complimentary or flattering, sometimes it means insincere, or even disgusting. These days lots of people think it means complete as in “a fulsome discussion”. link

I’ll go just a bit further and say that every distinguished and successful scientist ever known in history was a liberal by the first definition of the word. Every last one. If you aren’t a liberal, you can’t be a scientist. Period. No exceptions.

Earth’s carbon cycle contains 46,713 Gt (E15 gr) +/- 850 Gt (+/- 1.8%) of stores and reservoirs with a couple hundred fluxes Gt/y (+/- ??) flowing among those reservoirs. Mankind’s gross contribution over 260 years was 555 Gt or 1.2%. (IPCC AR5 Fig 6.1) Mankind’s net contribution, 240 Gt or 0.53%, (dry labbed by IPCC to make the numbers work) to this bubbling, churning caldron of carbon/carbon dioxide is 4 Gt/y +/- 96%. (IPCC AR5 Table 6.1) Seems relatively trivial to me. IPCC et. al. says natural variations can’t explain the increase in CO2. With these tiny percentages and high levels of uncertainty how would anybody even know? BTW fossil fuel between 1750 and 2011 represented 0.34% of the biospheric carbon cycle.
Mankind’s modelled additional atmospheric CO2 power flux (W/m^2, watt is power, energy over time) between 1750 and 2011, 261 years, is 2 W/m^2 of radiative forcing. (IPCC AR5 Fig SPM.5) Incoming solar RF is 340 W/m^2, albedo reflects 100 W/m^2 (+/- 30 & can’t be part of the 333), 160 W/m^2 reaches the surface (can’t be part of the 333), latent heat from the water cycle’s evaporation is 88 W/m2 (+/- 8). Mankind’s 2 W/m^2 contribution is obviously trivial, lost in the natural fluctuations.
One popular GHE theory power flux balance (“Atmospheric Moisture…. Trenberth et al 2011jcli24 Figure 10) has a spontaneous perpetual loop (333 W/m^2) flowing from cold to hot violating three fundamental thermodynamic laws. (1. Spontaneous energy out of nowhere, 2. perpetual loop w/o work, 3. cold to hot w/o work, 4. doesn’t matter because what’s in the system stays in the system) Physics must be optional for “climate” science. What really counts is the net W/m^2 balance at ToA which 7 out of 8 re-analyses included in the above cited paper concluded the atmosphere was cooling, not warming (+/- 12.3 W/m^2). Of course Dr. Trenberth says they are wrong because their cooling results are not confirmed by his predicted warming, which hasn’t happened for twenty years. (“All of the net TOA imbalances are not tenable and all except CFSR imply a cooling of the planet that clearly has not occurred.”) Except it also hasn’t gotten hotter.
Every year the pause/hiatus/lull/stasis continues (IPCC AR5 Box TS.3) IPCC’s atmospheric and ocean general circulation models diverge further from reality.

I think insults in debates are a problem, I prefer satire if one in annoyed enough. However , a brief glance through the posts on this site and elsewhere will elegantly demonstrates that insulting your opponents is not just a prerogative of supporters of mainstream climate science. The sceptic writers here seem to give as good as they get and more besides to anyone who dares offer an alternate viewpoint to their belief systems. I think the responses to ‘Griff’ are a case in point.

“I think insults in debates are a problem,”
And yet you have no problem insulting the intelligence, knowledge and experience of the other contributors to this blog with your straw men, argumentum ad verecundiam, argumentum ad populum, plain downright mendacity and disingenuous attempts to disrupt debate, do you?
Your friend Griff’s ridiculous attempt to malign the reputation and scientific credibility of Doctor Susan Crockford was yet another insult not only to the good lady herself, but to the intelligence every user of the blog who has the wit to visit her web site and acquaint themselves of her qualifications.
There’s more ways to insult someone other than name calling, sunshine, and you are a well practised exponent of them.
Passive aggression is another of your stock-in-trades too, of course.
Like all Lefties, you think everyone else except your fellows is stupid, and that’s why you lost both the EU referendum and the US Presidential election.

Gareth, my old Dad used to have a saying; “A rat smells his own hole first”. I’ve found that true of every class of liar and snake oil salesman I’ve ever encountered. They all, to a person, accuse their opponents of their own weaknesses and underhanded tactics.
Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Clipe
I suspect we are separated by a common language. However I’m writing in my second. Nadoleg Llawen i chi ac ewch Teulu a Blwyddin Newydd Da. Cael amser da dros Nadoleg ! You can use Google to translate, but be careful, I shall check you grammar!

Conclusions…Depending on how the climate changes, we might all pay for it. It might be difficult to restart the debate if evidence appears suggesting the worst-case scenarios are happening.
The warmer the better in my opinion.
Sincerely,
Tom in Minnesota

Tom S.,
“The warmer the better in my opinion. ”
First, people in already hot areas don’t share your opinion of warming.
Second, it is not just a matter of warming. The relevant question concerns changes in precipitation (e.g., storms, droughts) and a wide range of extreme weather. The models’ predictions will be proved wrong or right — but the wrong outcome would have real consequences.

Well Larry, I moved 250 miles south last year because I’m sick and tired of being the canary in this coal mine and I’m just too damned old to live in freezing conditions for 9 months a year anymore. I voted with my feet.
You go ahead and buy property in Alberta if you really think its about to become prime real estate. More power to you. I’m selling, I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage people betting against me would I?

Damned Russians. Never could trust the Russ. You know they harbor polar bears? They eat cabbage? And they hack Hillary’s eMail, God only knows why. Satan incarnate those Russ. There oughta be a law… /sarc

I answered one of Plait’s rants a year ago with an IPCC AR5 link which showed he was mistaken. Guess what happened the next time I tried to comment? My comment was refused, and I have not been able to comment since! “Slate” and Plait censor comments, and I have avoided reading their publication now for over a year.

Doug,
That’s something I’ve experienced several times when posting science (i.e., links to peer-reviewed research) on Leftist website, such as Brad DeLong’s. It upsets the faithful, and so they block it. That tells us much about those that do this.

Doug you aren’t alone. I’ve had the same experience with Ars Technica, Wired, Scientific American, Slate and HuffPo. In each example I was attempting to rebut using links to refereed journal articles. The most egregious was when the Science editor for Ars banned me for posting a link to the radiocarbon.org website in response to a person who questioned the error in 14C dating methods.
There aren’t any applicable laws really. They own the websites and they know (apparently) they have no obligation to host dissenting opinion.

In one way Trump should empower them has he clearly a much easier target they Obama, the real problem is ‘money ‘ Trump may well turn of the the taps that have been overflowing with green cash for green causes. And that will hurt those that have got used to an ‘easy time with lots of money ‘

Impassioned climate justice protester: “What must I do to make you see the gravity of this situation?”
Me: “Gee, I dunno, maybe paint yourself like an avatar and blow a whistle?”
Protester: “Satisfied?!?”
Me: “Nah, that wasn’t as effective as I thought it’d be.”

By Larry Kummer. Posted at the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Can the Left effectively oppose Trump, making arguments that mobilize public opinion? Their actions since the election suggest not.
–
Yes, Larry.
Citing Obama –
‘Yes they can.’ Not.

“It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.”
“This is important. But the relevant public policy question concerns future warming: what are the odds of various amounts of warming during different time horizons of the 21st century? There is no easy answer to this,”
Actually there is. CO2 doesn’t cause global warming. See my post from 10/10/2016, or Google “Interesting Climate Sensitivity Analysis.” My study shows that the probable cause of the late 20th century warming was ozone depletion resulting from the release of CFCs, largely by spray cans. If it was, the Montreal Protocol put a stop to that, but temperatures will remain elevated for a while due to chlorine’s catalytic destruction of ozone and to its consequent long residence time in the stratosphere.

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